Jesse Zhang

I wanted to just like play games all the time or just like hang out with friends or play sports.

And

Yeah, my parents had like a very interesting way of raising us, me and my sister.

What they did was basically when we were really little, it was like an extreme level of discipline.

When I was little, I played a lot of piano, essentially like three, four hours a day.

And then for competitions, they just pull me out of school and just go hard at it.

And then I guess fortunately for me, my parents decided, okay, math was probably a better way to go.

And I was just like quite talented at math when I was little.

Even for that, it's just like full force, like you're just committing everything.

We did not have TV in the house.

We didn't have video games.

We didn't really take vacation growing up.

You're kind of in this mindset of you're sacrificing most things to focus on one thing.

When you're a kid, actually, like you have no frame of reference.

So it doesn't feel hard necessarily.

It's because your parents are kind of setting up the criteria for you.

And in hindsight, I had a very happy childhood.

But I think that level of discipline and also just competitiveness is very hard to gain that after your childhood is over.

Because when you're in your childhood, your brain's still forming.

So that kind of forms your personality.